Sterilization of Carrie Buck. David Smith

spoke of the past, but only of the trivial, the mundane.

      Not long after arriving, Carrie had begun taking furloughs to the Dobbs home. There, she saw for the first time her child, Vivian Elaine.

      On December 10, 1927, another member of the Buck family was admitted to the institution, Carrie’s half-sister, Doris. But Doris was not to accept her incarceration as docilely as her mother and sister. Though there were strict rules at the institution “about socializing between sexes,” Doris rarely obeyed them. Several times she slipped away and was gone overnight, until she finally ran off to elope with her first husband.

      Doris was also assigned to kitchen duty as Carrie had been—though she took her duties much less seriously and “snuck down to the river as often as possible.” Still, despite the difference in their personalities, the sisters became good friends and saw their mother frequently.

      ILLUSTRATION 2: Drewry-Gillian Building where Carrie and Doris Buck lived in open wards on the second floor.

      Nevertheless, the work was hard and unending. The Buck girls, like most of those in the Colony, dreamed of getting out and “of being free.”

      Her fearful memories of the Colony remained trapped in Carrie’s mind for years after and caused the Newberrys, the family with whom Carrie would be housed when she left the institution, to comment, “She hates the idea of going back to Lynchburg again.”

      Carrie herself would beg Dr. Bell, the superintendent after Priddy, to give her a discharge rather than a parole from the place she remembered so painfully:

      I hope you will not put it against me and have me come back there…You have promised (the discharge) in a year’s time, but I guess the trouble I had will throw me back in getting it,…but I hope not.

      Six months after her arrival, Dr. Priddy stood as a witness before Aubrey Strode (attorney for the Board), R. G. Shelton (Carrie’s guardian) and other members of the Colony Board and gave his opinion of Carrie Buck’s mental condition:

      I have had Carrie Buck under observation and care in the Colony since the date of her admission on June 4, 1924, and from psychological examination and the Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon mental test, I have ascertained that she is feebleminded of the lowest grade Moron class. Her mental age is nine years, or of the average child at nine years, and her chronological age is eighteen years her last birthday. The sworn history of her case, as shown in the deposition constituting a part of the commitment papers, is that she is of unknown paternity. Her mother, Emma Buck, is and has been for several years a feeble-minded patient in the Colony of low mental grade. According to the depositions Carrie has had one illegitimate mentally defective child. She is a moral delinquent but physically capable of earning her own living if protected against childbearing by sterilization. Otherwise she would have to remain in an institution for mentally defectives during the period of her child-bearing potentiality covering thirty years. The history of all such cases in which mental defectiveness, insanity and epilepsy develop in the generations of feeble-minded persons is that the baneful effects of heredity will be shown in descendents of all future generations. Should she be corrected against child-bearing by the simple and comparatively harmless operation of salpingectomy, she could leave the institution, enjoy her liberty and life and become self-sustaining.

      In a serious voice, R. G. Shelton asked, “Doctor, what assurance can you give that the operation suggested by you in this case will not be dangerous to the health, or even the life, of Carrie Buck?”

      LLUSTRATION 3: Albert Sidney Priddy. Reprinted from History of Virginia, Vol. V, Virginia Biography. New York: The American Historical Society. Courtesy of Jones Memorial Library, Lynchburg, Virginia.

      Priddy disdainfully turned the question aside, “I have performed and assisted in the performance of 90 or 100 operations on female patients in this institution for pelvic diseases involving the removal of diseased tubes which necessarily required sterilization which is a more radical operation in that the tubes themselves are removed, than salpingectomy performed on sound tubes for sterilization, which is simply a division and ligating the Fallopian tubes without any serious consequences whatsoever.

      Patients as a rule leave their beds in from two to three weeks and none of their womanly functions are in the least impaired except that of conception and procreation. The operation for salpingectomy is as harmless as any surgical operation can be, and not a single death has occurred in any of the cases so operated on.”

      Shelton weighed this answer: “Might not this girl, Carrie Buck, by some course in proper training in your institution, and without this operation, be brought to such sense of responsibility as that she might be restored to society without constraint and harmful effects both to herself and society?”

      Priddy rebuffed this idea. “This would be an impossibility, as mental defectiveness, self-control and moral conception are organically lacking (in her) and cannot be supplied by teaching or training, she being congenitally and incurably defective.”

      Shelton persisted, “If this operation be not per formed, do you know of any other way in which this patient might be restored to society?”

      “I do not,” Priddy replied confidently.

      “Are we to understand,” Shelton said soberly, “that unless this girl is so operated upon it is likely that both for her protection and the protection of society she must be kept in custody and confinement until her childbearing age is past?”

      All eyes fastened on Priddy. His answer left no doubt: “It is necessary that she be kept in custody during the period of childbearing.”

      With a sigh and a hint of boredom, Aubrey Strode turned to Carrie. “Do you care anything about having this operation performed on you?”

      The slight, angular, sharp-featured girl looked at him soberly, pondering the question for several minutes. She seemed surprised that anyone had spoken to her. A silence fell in the room. Then, in the only words she uttered aloud during the entire course of the trial, Carrie said with dignity, “I have not, it is up to my people.”

      It would have been perfectly normal for Carrie to have assumed that her family would be involved in making the decision of what was best for her. It was a reasonable assumption of trust for her to make: that somehow, someone would look out for her best interests. Tragically, Carrie had no “people” to help her. She was alone.

      The Board’s conclusion came quickly, declaring that:

      Carrie Buck is a feeble-minded inmate of this institution and by the laws of heredity is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health, and that the welfare of the said Carrie Buck and of society will be promoted by such sterilization.

      Aubrey Strode remembered the atmosphere at the end of the hearing sometime later when he wrote to Don Preston:

      The board then inquired if it might safely proceed under the Act, but I had to advise that the Virginia Act had yet to stand the test of the Courts, whereupon I was instructed to take to court a test case.

      By the middle of September, not long after the Board had voted that Carrie Buck should be sexually sterilized by Dr. Priddy, the die had been cast in the selection of Carrie for the test case.

      Dr. Priddy immediately began accumulating information. On September 19th he wrote to Caroline Wilhelm asking for her help in collecting background information on Carrie. He reminded Miss Wilhelm that she had not only been responsible for Carrie’s admission to the Colony, but her mother’s admission as well. Only a day earlier he had written